On the evening of August 8, 1969, Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger and Steven Parent had been brutally murdered by the Manson Family. It was some of the surprising and horrifying crimes of the 20th century, a tragedy that also reverberates 50 years later.
And now… there’s a very dangerous slasher film about it.
“The Haunting of Sharon Tate” is a ghoulish movie that dramatizes these heinous slayings like a very cheesy pulp thriller, utilizing snippets of documentary footage to remind us that this story is true and deserves extra respectful and nuanced remedy than writer-director Daniel Farrands (“The Amityville Murders”) appears capable of present. The lives of Tate, Sebring, Frykowski, Folger and Parent are lowered to inventory horror archetypes, trapped in an underwritten and in the end insulting thriller, with a conclusion that strives for profundity and fails in spectacular vogue.
Watch Video: Hilary Duff Fights for Survival in Trailer for ‘The Haunting of Sharon Tate’
Farrands’ movie takes place over the times main as much as these despicable slayings, as Tate (Hilary Duff) and her mates take sunny swims and ponder, pointedly, that their avenue title at 10050 Cielo Drive means “heaven” in Spanish (a definition which is, at finest, a stretch). It’s so vivid and bubbly that the primary act performs like an old-timey gangster film, with Fate itself enjoying the man who mutters, “Nice life you got here; sure would be a shame if something were to happen to it.”
As the clock ticks all the way down to the inevitable violence, Tate experiences a sequence of cheesy jump-scares involving rattling ice machines, reel-to-reel audio tapes that mysteriously play Manson’s track “Cease to Exist” all by themselves, and pictures of the Manson Family all of the sudden peering by home windows within the background à la “The Strangers.”
Also Read: Sharon Tate’s Sister Says Hilary Duff Movie Is ‘Classless,’ ‘Total Fabrication’
Meanwhile, the movie’s ensemble is saddled with comically exposition-laden dialogue that wouldn’t move muster within the weakest “Friday the 13th” sequel. (And Ferrands would in all probability know — he’s beforehand directed documentaries about each the Jason Voorhees and Freddy Krueger franchises.) Tate and her mates have a ridiculous behavior of describing themselves in awkward element, simply in case an viewers is watching them and wishes a fast primer.
So we get painful moments during which Jay Sebring (Jonathan Bennett, “Mean Girls”) is said a “stylist to the stars” and Wojciech Frykowsky (Pawel Szajda, “Imperium”) is instructed by his girlfriend, Abigail Folger (Lydia Hearst, SyFy’s “Z Nation”), that that Sharon Tate is married to his finest buddy, filmmaker Roman Polanski. Just in case Frykowsky forgot or one thing.
Polanski, who was in Europe on the time of the murders, solely seems briefly in documentary footage, however his presence is felt all through. Partly as a result of he calls Tate in a dream sequence, and partly as a result of when Tate tells her mates she’s scared for her life, they exclaim, “This isn’t one of Roman’s movies!”
“The Haunting of Sharon Tate” takes inspiration not simply from the murders, however from the story that, one 12 months earlier, Tate described a seemingly prophetic dream during which she and/or Sebring had been murdered in a similar way. Farrands takes this premise and makes use of it to fill his movie with rug-pulling nightmares and ruminations on destiny. It’s embarrassingly on-the-nose for Tate to ask her mates in the event that they really feel like they’re “slaves to their own destiny” in a movie that’s already resulting in a grotesque, foregone conclusion.
Also Read: IFC Films Lands US Rights to Charles Manson Family Drama ‘Charlie Says’
“The Haunting of Sharon Tate” performs like a snuff movie: The viewers has been invited to observe these actual individuals die, in a film that has little or no to say about their premature deaths. There’s no context or perception,…
